Hopefully more people will be along to provide other perspectives!

Apparently, physican Baldassare Capra used the nova as an excuse to attack Galileo and make himself look better. Given the number of you who have heard of Galileo versus the number familiar with Capra, I think we can guess how that turned out.

There is, of course, a larger story here, one that is about either (1) what the "new star" was, whether it was actually new, was it a miraculous creation or the product of natural motions of the universe (2) which set of academics could explain it better, or (3) you see? you SEE? THE WORLD IS GOING TO END. LIKE, NOW.

Capra's accusation had nothing to do with any of that. He just wanted people to know that he had seen it first.

As Capra told the story, he had observed it one day along with his informal mentor and a non-academic but very rich Italian man. In his excitement, he later pointed it out to Giacomo Corano (another rich Italian man), and only then did Corano tell Galileo. But, Capra claimed angrily, Galileo had made no mention of his help in his lecture series.

Galileo probably ignored this attack publicly. (We'll get to that.) But one imagines that it contributed at least somewhat to the title he unleashed on a later publication aimed against Capra: Defense against the Slanders and Deceits of Baldassare Capra. Especially because, after demonstrating conclusively that Capra had plagiarized Galileo's (other) work, he stuck in a jibe about the "priority in discovery" episode. And he stuck in a jibe about the writing style in which Capra made the accusation:

I do not know in what school Capra has learned these brutish manners.

The lower the stakes, the more everything matters.

(As well might also be applied re: the surprisingly vigorous modern debate over which texts in the actual scientific controversy over the nova were published under pen names.)

The broader context of the impact of the nova in western Europe, unsurprisingly, involves various levels of religion. In the academy, it became a flashpoint for the waning days of credible astrology, and whether mathematicians or philosophers had the better claim for explaining astronomical events.

Beyond academia, even less surprisingly, the question tended to be less "what does it mean" than "where do I build my apocalypse bunker."

Wonders in the heavens were a traditional sign of Bad Things To Come in Christian Europe. Early 1500s Augsburg, for example, witness the Kreuzfall--"cross-fall"--in which red and black (ash?) cross-shaped...things...fell across the land, on people, etc. This was immediately publicized as a sign of God's anger at the Augsburgers, and if they did not repent, he would send down realpunishment. The event did not lead to "real" punishment, although it did lead to a woman named Anna Laminit claiming prophetic authority to interpet the Kreuzfall, becoming hugely famous to the extent that the emperor and empress became followers of her...until she was debunked as a fraud by, for real, the duchess of Bavaria.

But I digress because that's one of my favorite historical stories. More revelant to, you know, the next century: from the mid-1500s to the mid (ish)-1600s in particular (the 1400s are NOT excluded here, though), European popular pamphlets are rife with descriptions, fears, and expectations of weird things in the sky and/or astrological phenomena (alignments of the planets, and such). And these fears are centered around one thing: they all signal the coming apocalypse.

Oh, and now that we have progressed from academic pettiness to the deepest darkest places of religion, let's go to...cults?

Because yeah. The early Rosicrucian pamphlets, from 1614 and 1615, especially love citing 1604 as the herald or the actual dawning of a new, millennarian age. Which is not to avoid the apocalypse, but rather, to project a good time before the end.

The texts' link between the nova and the apocalypse signals its ongoing importance--either to the author of the texts actually believing in the philosophy they espoused, or to understanding how useful it could be to play on the imaginations of its audience.

Reminding one, rather, of Anna Laminit a century before, convincing the Augsburg upper class to give her a fancy house and a prime place at church...and convincing Martin Luther to visit her in search of prophecy and wisdom.

~~

Further Reading:

• Robert Westman's The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (2011) parses the Capra/Galileo controversy within the context of the mathematician vs. natural philosophy debate (they were actually on the same side in that? More or less?). It's just Chapter 14; don't be intimidated by the whole book!

There's an account of SN1604 in an Arabic text from Yemen, Rawh al-Ruh by 'Isa bin Lu.tf Allah, as discussed by this article, Arabic Reports about Supernovae 1604 and 1572.... The article has a bit of linguistic discussion and some detailed historical astronomy info pertaining to the dating of the event, but the actual text referencing the supernova itself is brief. Here's their transliteration of the relevant line (note that Anno Hejira 1013 corresponds to 1604/1605 AD):

[year A.H. 1013] ... wa-fi rabi' al-awwal .zahara najm fi al-gharb fi bilad burj al -qaws min al-nayazik fi jirm al-mushtari aqama muddat arba'inyawman thumma ghaba wa-kana .hadithuhu ma sanadhkuruhu min al-fitan wa-l-i.d.tirab ...

And here's their translation of that line and some of the germane contextual information from its page:

Then the year 1013 entered and in that year ... on Saturday, 22nd of the previously mentioned month ... Then, the minister travelled to Bait al-Faqih, then to Mekka al-Musharrafa which he entered in the middle of Rabi' al-Akhir [Rabi' II] of this year.

And in the month of Rabi' al-Awwal [Rabi' I] a star [najm] of the nayazik appeared in the West [fi al-gharb] in ["land" crossed out] (the beginning of) the zodiacal sign [burj] Sagittarius, as large as Jupiter [literally: in the body/appearance of Jupiter]. It remained for 40 days and then disappeared. And what happened with it [or: what was caused by it] was what we shall mention of conflicts and tumult ...

Unfortunately, since the paper is mainly focusing on the astronomy, they didn't bother to translate what was mentioned of "conflicts and tumult", but they do relate how this same text also records the supernova of 1572 (aka Tycho's Supernova). Transliteration of that section:

[year A.H.] 980 Wa-dakhalat sanat thamanin wa-tis'imi'a wa-fiha .zahara najm min majra banat na'sh al-.sughra mimma yali al-mashriq akbar min al- zuhara, wa-ta.haddatha al-nas anna dhalika li-mawt al-Mu.tahhar ibn al-imam wa-anna .zuhur mithlihi la yakun illa li-mawt malik min al-muluk al-jisam aw ra'is 'a.zim fi dhalika al-iqlim.

Translation:

Then began the year 980h [14 May 1572 to 2 May 1573 AD, +/- 2 days]. In it, a star [najm] larger than Venus appeared in the path [majra] of Ursa Minor [Banat Na'sh al-.Sughra] towards the East. People said that this would indicate the death of al-Mu.tahhar, the son of the Imam, and that the appearance of such [objects] only happens in order to indicate the death of some mighty king or a great leader in that region.

So it seems like transient celestial phenomenon, especially ones as striking as new stars, were generally regarded as portentous in the region.

Interesting aside: The ill-fated fellow whose death was signified by the supernova, al-Mu.tahhar, was the grandfather of the author of the text!

The article includes a picture of the manuscript page featuring SN1604; I'd love to try to translate the rest of that page to see if it says what sort of conflicts were attributed to it, but it might take me a while.